Index, Icon, Horizon

New York

September 17 – October 17, 1998

Richard Gray Gallery located at 1018 Madison Avenue, in New York, is pleased to present David Klamen: Index, Icon, Horizon, on exhibit from September 17th through October 24th, 1998. The public is invited to join the artist at an opening reception to take place on Thursday, September 17th, 5 - 7pm.

"It is the process of discovery that most interests the artist. Nothing is as it first seems in these impressive paintings." Garrett Holg, ARTnews, October 1993

"Rich in ambiguities, Klamen's work makes us look and think longer about images that, at first, appear all too familiar." Garrett Holg, ARTnews, March 1997

David Klamen (American, b. 1961) ever impassioned by theory and philosophy, has always been particularly interested in semiotics and epistemology. Both philosophies address the fundamental nature of knowledge itself; how we interpret things, what makes meaning and how we recognize images. "Index" refers to that which his paintings represent, the union of artist and material, as a footprint represents the union of a person with the ground. "Icon" refers to a more literal depiction such as a photograph or still life painting. "Horizon" refers to the meeting point of viewer and picture plane, which is perhaps what interests the artist most. This is the point where each viewer's experiences fuse with the image to produce a subjective response. In his paintings, Klamen works to slow down that very interaction. In earlier works - such as those found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art - he accomplishes this with very dark, low contrast paintings which require some time for the viewer to adjust and understand. His latest watercolors are composite landscapes about the size of a sheet of notebook paper and contain on average 30 individual landscapes, coercing the viewer to stay and explore them all. Other works in this exhibition slow the disclosure of the image with very high-contrast, op-art-inspired stripes which sometimes reveal an image, as in Learning Knowing, and sometimes are non-representational. In any case David Klamen's new work provides the viewer with intimate watercolors that lure one into their atmospheric environment.